Sports teams have an edge when playing at home versus on the road. It’s an indisputable fact. Professional handicappers make a living at knowing the odds, and they incorporate home field advantage into their point spreads. The rule of thumb I’d always heard in NFL football was to count on the offense to score an additional three points when playing at home. But is that really the case? I decided to find out for myself.
To solve the question, I pored over the game results from the last 10 years of NFL regular season games – 2003-2012. When the numbers were crunched, and the smoke had cleared, I found my answer: In the last ten years, NFL teams scored an average of 2.58 more points at home than they do on the road.
As is often the case when researching something like this, more questions arose. How did each individual NFL team fare when playing at home versus on the road? Which NFL team enjoyed the greatest home field advantage? Which NFL team had the worst? Had any teams actually scored more points on the road than at home?
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